CHALLENGING LIMITATIONS RELATED TO LANGUAGES AND THEIR USE

As a professional linguist, I concern myself with all things language and linguistics – and someone in my position should always be among the first to study language and linguistics and preoccupy myself with it from whatever angle, however tough, abstruse or insane-sounding, right?

Did you know that the word “Babel” in the Tower of Babel means “confusion”? Now, I make no claim of being a Biblical scholar here, but I did read the story of the Tower of Babel online somewhere and see a video about it on Youtube recently. It is agreed that the people built the Tower of Babel to reach the skies (i.e. Heaven / celestial paradise), as well as bind themselves together, and that it would be a proud, eternal monument to themselves. But we can but wonder why God took away our singular language; but then it was probably because He didn’t want us all joining Him in Heaven considering what was taking place, because, apparently, “We just don’t belong there until we’re dead.” (Cue sad faces and a mass ensemble of “ohhhh”.) Still, He was kind enough not to destroy the Tower of Babel, which to this day remains recognised as a symbol of unity in the human race when you think about it, whether completed or not.

But that doesn’t answer this question: when God destroyed our single language, did He invent all the new ones Himself or didn’t He (assuming He does actually exist)? Not that it really matters because people continue to change / influence / contribute to their own languages all the time, whether or not they label it is at such. Indeed, French actually started off as one of many despised vernacular varieties of Latin. When I was at university one of my German lecturers actually told us the story of the origin of the F-word. I can’t imagine God inventing swear words, can you? And you can actually buy the Klingon Dictionary (by Marc Okrand) on Amazon, believe it or not.

Oh, what do you have to say for how you (choose to) communicate? Indeed, I’m reminded of the early point in the film 300 where Leonidas tells the Persian messenger, “In Sparta, everyone, even a king’s messenger, is held accountable for the words in his voice.” Not that we could all hope to actually talk to God as so few people speak what is officially His language, but even then we don’t even all agree on what that actually is: some say it’s Ancient Aramaic or Hebrew, some say it’s Classical Arabic, and still others probably say it’s Sanskrit or something. Actually, what does it even matter when, being omniscient, He should know all languages anyway? So, Praise be to God, Dieu soit loué, Lob sei Gott, Alabado sea Dios, etc. etc.

Like everyone else, I might go to Heaven when I die, but then I might not. For the time being, in this life, for better or worse, one of my top (and most fulfilling) priorities in this life (if not THE top priority) is continuing to do the professional translator thing – and keep records of it for generations to come (admittedly, this is to promote myself as a professional translator more than anything else). I’ve said a lot in these business blogs and it looks like I’m not quite ready to stop it yet. It may be true that we don’t all speak one specific language between us but I’m only too happy to challenge limitations across known languages.

I suppose not everything is possible in translation. Consider this: back at school, I remember the odd occasion of people rubbing out letters on the blackboard that said what was for lunch that day and leaving nonsensical and crude things, including – dare I say it – in the case of “fresh fruit”, rubbing out the first three letters of “fresh” and the first three letters of “fruit” to leave “shit”. Shit for lunch? No thank you. Sorry if you’re vomiting now. In French, you can’t rub out individual letters in “fruits frais” to leave “merde”, and in German, you can’t rub out individual letters in “frisches Obst” to leave “Scheisse”; I get that. But my approach here is not supposed to be limited purely to ruling out what is simply not possible in translation; which brings me to the next paragraph.

I recently looked at some sentences which sound crazy in English but are still grammatical. I wondered what would transpire in my best attempts at translating them into French and German. It was impossible to predict what would develop / how things would turn out, but… well, why not? For the record, this does not include stuff which deliberately has specific words in it with multiple meanings which are aimed at stirring confusion; stuff which just loses its validity in any language other than English, like the following three examples:

1. Have you ever noticed that “read” rhymes with “lead”, and “read” rhymes with “lead”? Also, “read” and “lead” don’t rhyme. Neither do “read” and “lead”.
2. “I see,” said the blind man, as he picked up his hammer and saw.
3. Time flies like an arrow, but fruit flies like a banana.

Now let’s translate some of these crazy sentences in English, into French and German. And let’s see if they retain an element of this craziness in the new languages. I got these sentences from here http://mentalfloss.com/article/49238/7-sentences-sound-crazy-are-still-grammatical but you probably won’t need the explanations provided therein to understand them if you know French and / or German:

1. The horse raced past the barn fell.
French: Le cheval est passé en courant par la bois de grange. (apparently no element of craziness retained here)
German: Das Pferd ist bei der Scheuneholz vorgelaufen. (apparently not here, either)

2. The complex houses married and single soldiers and their families.
French: Le complexe accommode des soldat mariés et célibataires et leurs familles. (apparently not here, either)
German: Der Komplex beherbergt verheiratate und ledige Soldaten sowie ihre Familien. (apparently not here, either)

3. The rat the cat the dog chased killed ate the malt.
French: Le rat que le chat que le chien a chassé a tué avait mangé le malt. (Now the rat could only have eaten the malt before the cat killed it, which is why I put the main verb – manger – in the pluperfect tense rather than the perfect. And see how I’ve included “que” phrases within other “que” phrases, although I have to admit that you probably cannot do this and call it proper French. What do native French speakers think about this?)
German: Die von der vom Hund verfolgten Katze umgebrachte Ratte hatte das Malz gegessen. (Again, the main verb – gegessen – is in the pluperfect tense here. I enjoyed doing this one – it was a bit of a challenge, but I enjoyed it. Not least because I think the element of “craziness” is still retained.)

Has any of this gotten you thinking? Whether the answer is yes or no, thank you for reading.

Signed: George Trail